The judge considered it to have a “pejorative meaning”. The name “Jihad” was thus replaced by the first name “Jahid”.
In early November 2018, a resident of Dijon, mother of two children, gave birth to a baby boy. During her declaration of civil status to the City of Dijon, she announced her intention to name her son “Jihad”. Her choice of a first name quickly led to controversy.
The City of Dijon approached the courts to settle the matter. On 6 November, Eric Mathais, prosecutor of the Republic of Dijon, explained that the prosecutor’s office was going to “issue a summons in the name cancellation to the mother of the child for a hearing before the judge for family matters”.
The mother of the child – who is not a Muslim – chose this name because “she loves him very much,” she explained in November 2018.
“It’s a personal choice. This name has nothing to do with the war. We must not see war everywhere. In France, a lot of girls are called Marie, it’s also a name connoted religiously, but we do not tell them anything,” she argued. The mother also said that she knew some children named after her son: “I know two or three parents who live in the neighbourhoods of Grésilles or Fontaine-d’Ouche and who called their child Jihad. They did not have any problems.”
The court of Dijon however canceled the wish of the mother to name her newborn, as reported by Le Figaro. According to the ruling “the name ‘Jihad’, which has a pejorative meaning, because it is associated with Islamist movements, is replaced by the name ‘Jahid’ which, in Arabic, has the same meaning of ‘effort’ or ‘courage” without being associated with the notion of war”.
In fact, the public prosecutor’s office considered that the first name could be considered as “harmful for the child and likely to cause him problems”.
The court in Dijon did recognised that there were the multiple meanings of the word “Jihad” as in sacred fight, Holy war, job or effort, but stressed the persistence of a negative connotation due to the ambient climate. “It remains nonetheless that in the public opinion and given the current terrorist context, this name is necessarily associated with fundamentalist Islamist movements” , explained the public prosecutor of Dijon, Éric Mathais.
Moreover, the decision of the Dijon court on Friday confirms a previous one. Indeed, this name had already been refused in Toulouse (Haute-Garonne). The judge found that this name was against the best interests of the child.
His parents called him Jahid. The young woman from Dijon agglomeration explained that she would do the same, but that “if [the reasons for refusing the name Jihad] do not suit me, I reserve the right to call on a lawyer to challenge this decision.”
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